After the Barbie vs Oppenheimer mania of 2023, 2024 had a lot to live up to in the movie stakes. And it hasn’t disappointed — but while big hitters like Deadpool & Wolverine and Inside Out 2 might have taken the box office by storm, they weren’t actually the most talked-about movies of the year.
Instead, Wicked and It Ends With Us have grabbed all the headlines — but, sometimes not for cinematic reasons. There is no denying that they were both big box office successes too — Wicked, in particular, which raked in a staggering $164.2 million worldwide in its opening weekend alone — but the behind the scenes drama also got Us talking.
But let’s not pretend we’re mad about it! Some of the funniest and most-shared memes of the year have come out of Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo’s now-infamous press tour, along with a ton of fascinating speculation about what’s actually been going on between these two talented, kooky and very emotional actresses.
When journalist Tracy E. Gilchrist asked the pair a pretty innocuous question about people “holding space” to the lyrics of “Defying Gravity,” she had no idea that she was about to go wildly viral and, for a few days there, become the most famous junket reporter on the planet. And that incredible, baffling clip, along with some of the other gushing and tearful moments from the press tour, has brought Us so much joy that, well, we could cry. In fact, we kind of wish Ariana Grande was here to comfortingly tap our arms right now with her pointy nails.
@siennahubertross Everyone deserves a chance to fly #arianagrande #wicked #comedy @caroline
♬ original sound – Sienna Hubert-Ross
The drama around It Ends With Us on the other (not so pointy) hand didn’t spark quite so much joy and delight. Instead, it focused on the rumored tension between the movie’s two big stars, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. What at first seemed like it might just be standard catty gossip rapidly gathered steam when Baldoni himself admitted in an interview with Elle that there had been “friction” on set — although he has also always been eager to emphasize that he respected Lively as an actress and creative force.
One of the sticking points seemed to be that It Ends With Us, based on Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel, was a serious movie about serious issues — in this case, domestic violence — but the publicity trail, fronted by Lively, was a little too many flowers and rainbows. (Lively later shared several resources for domestic violence via her social media accounts.) A few months on from the drama, which swirled all summer, it doesn’t seem like Lively and Baldoni have plans to sign up for the sequel anytime soon.
The last movie to generate this much whispering was Don’t Worry Darling, back in 2022 — remember when the world went crazy over Florence Pugh and Olivia Wilde allegedly clashing, with it all very dramatically climaxing when it looked like Harry Styles spat on Chris Pine at Venice Film Festival? In the age of social media, when tiny moments can rapidly get dissected into huge, meme-worthy, viral events, actors have to be eternally on their guard in case they accidentally put a foot (or saliva globule) wrong.
In some cases, it’s not always the stars of the movies themselves who grab the headlines; sometimes it’s who they’re associated with too. You’ve got to feel for 12-year-old Blue Ivy Carter, whose big moment on the red carpet at the Los Angeles premiere of Mufasa: The Lion King was totally overshadowed by the presence of her parents, Jay-Z and Beyoncé (and her grandmother Tina Knowles), just hours after the rapper had furiously denied rape allegations. In this case, Blue Ivy couldn’t win — if her dad hadn’t showed for her big night, he would arguably have stolen even more attention from his little girl.
While movies like Wicked and It Ends With Us would undoubtedly have been box office success stories even without all the extra juice flowing around them, their marketing departments must be secretly overjoyed by all this extra attention that they didn’t even have to pay for, whether it was calculated or not. Sure, it must’ve been pretty tiring to be manning the inbox and answering the phones in the It Ends With Us publicity department for a few weeks back there, but there’s a huge pay-off: getting talked-about is seriously lucrative!
Since so far, 2025 looks like it’s going to be big on blockbuster reboots and sequels too, with Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and Jurassic World Rebirth both scheduled for release, along with live action remakes of Snow White and How To Train Your Dragon — two tales as old as time! — we have a feeling it could be another bumper year for endless press tours and behind-the-scenes intrigue too. But the beauty of pop culture is that you never know what’s coming: after all, a few months ago there’s no way we could have anticipated that Ariana Grande’s pointy nails and the words “holding space” would make for some of the most talked-about moments of the year.
